


Lightning Strikes Twice

by helena_s_renn



Category: Def Leppard, Music RPF
Genre: AU, Blood, Death, M/M, Nightmare, Religious overtones, power of flight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:27:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23017753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helena_s_renn/pseuds/helena_s_renn
Summary: ...he could never outrun the black, clawed shadow that always sped both behind and ahead of him. Sav's wings unfolded from his back as he reached the edge of a cliff and jumped...
Relationships: Steve Clark/Rick Savage
Kudos: 7





	Lightning Strikes Twice

**Author's Note:**

> *no disrespect EVER to the real DL past or present.
> 
> *heed the tags. 
> 
> *cross-posted from RF.

-2006 (AU)

_His strings were razor wire. They shredded his fingers and with their own mind, tried to wrap around his arm. Sav dropped his bass, the Hamer four-string, in horror of his blood streaking the pearl white. When he looked up, no one looked back. Not from the places of his brothers on stage, not from the echoing arena. Somewhere, a baby wailed, the pistol shot at the beginning of his race._

_It was night, and the air was full of murder. The moon hung full and yellow like the harvest, but baleful, a fat tyrant who marked his time and progress that Sav already knew he'd never beat. Never once had. Running, running, running as fast as he could and more, as fast as a car speeding unchecked down a country lane but he could never outrun the black, clawed shadow that always sped both behind and ahead of him. Sav's wings unfolded from his back as he reached the edge of a cliff and jumped, rising on air currents and circling, searching. He skimmed as fast as a jet over deserts, fields, mountains belching smoke and ash. The elation of the power of flight had him desperately hard, no outlet in sight. Whatever, whoever he was looking for, Sav found nothing. The world was empty. Panic tightened in him like sour fruit, like something rotting at the side of the road._

_He came to a house, just a hovel at the edge of a moor. The door opened. Yellow-orange light pierced the night sky. An old man stepped out, jabbed a finger up at Sav where he circled far above and cursed him... them. "Ye be goin' to hell! Idolatrous, revelrous, fornicating bastards, all-a yeh!"_

_As if the man were god, lightning struck Sav and fried his wings. He fell spiralling to earth, would have exploded from the inside out in a slosh of pulverised guts if he'd been a real boy. He landed hard but shook himself and hauled himself to his feet dragging broken, charred wings behind him up the aisle of the church he'd been taken to as a child for communion and confirmation, only it too was in ruins, peeled paint and shattered windows. At the front, upon the floor of the dais..._

_An insidious laugh shook the place. Pure evil. "You've returned. But too late as ever."_

_"Nooooo!" Sav screamed, running up the aisle. He already knew what he'd find. Steve, dressed in white, pale in death in a puddle of blood but somehow clean upon the crimson spread, only the ends of his golden, candy-floss hair dragging in the thick syrup of lost life. There wasn't a mark on him, the stress that aged his face and deadened his eyes, which were wide open and fixed on the ceiling, gone. Sav made a mess of it, he always did, trying to perform CPR he'd been too lazy to learn on flesh still warm, to no avail. His red handprints marked the snowy vest, streaks and droplets spattered everywhere by his ruined wings churning in anguish. At the end, he was doing nothing but hitting Steve's thin chest, bashing his helpless rage onto the fine bones._

_"Nooo-ooooh!" This scream was Joe's first at the end of Too Late. Sav fell forward into the puddle, so much now it was running down the steps up to the altar, while thunder rumbled and the walls shook. He drowned in it, in the iron-salt of it. It tasted like Steve, his life, his seed. Choking, Sav threw himself on the body of his friend, lover, co-creator and didn't even fight his end. Not this time. He counted his decreasing heartbeats, writhing in a slow horizontal screw one last time, no friction only blood..._

Sav jumped awake in the darkness, disoriented and beyond disturbed. "Who's there?" he rasped. He could feel a presence, but unlike those in the dream, it was alive, and it wasn't malicious. "Steve?"

No, he knew immediately, and felt ashamed for being so damned needy, so disgusting, so weak. His eyes had teared in his sleep, the saltwater dripping as he sat up. When he put his hands up to his face to wipe it away, he could feel – or couldn't feel – slackness on one side. Sighing, Sav leaned forward and buried his face in his hands.

Fin.


End file.
